


A Useful Skill

by The_Last_Kenobi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Mace Windu - Freeform, Mace Windu made mistakes but he isn't evil, Shatterpoints, canon character death, i still love him, you can't stop me so don't even try
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:08:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25582618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Last_Kenobi/pseuds/The_Last_Kenobi
Summary: Mace Windu sees Shatterpoints. It gets him far in life, and it gets him nowhere pleasant.A brief glimpse into the life and mind of the Master of the Order as the phantoms fall.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 68





	A Useful Skill

Mace Windu sees Shatterpoints.

Everyone in the Order seems to know that—he can not recall a time in his life when his peers, superiors, and subordinates did not know it—and yet…and yet nobody seems to grasp what that means.

Master Yoda, perhaps, has an idea.

The ancient, diminutive Master is familiar with being able to see beyond the ordinary, even for a Jedi, even for a Councilor; he also understands what it meant to try and convey what he was sensing without others understanding.

But Mace Windu sees Shatterpoints.

It was a useful skill, everyone agreed. Unique. Handy in a crisis, handy in preventing a crisis. Like psychometry, but in the other direction. Where Quinlan Vos touches things and sees and feels their histories, Mace Windu looks at things and sees a thousand possibilities flashing by, sees fractures and pathways and twists and turns.

He can look at a locked door or a pane of reinforced transperisteel and press his palm to it—find the weaknesses, the minute flaws and tiny movements within and without—and break it in a fraction of the time and with a fraction of the effort another Jedi would need.

His ability puts him in the medical ward with untreatable headaches every few weeks in his childhood, and then less and less over the years as he forces himself to manage.

It carves deep lines around his eyes before they should have appeared.

It drives his mouth in a wary downward curve even when he is at rest.

It sees him Knighted early, promoted to the Council by age twenty, made Master of the Order before thirty.

Meditation makes it better, and meditation makes it worse. At least Quinlan can wear gloves to stifle his abilities; Mace would have to die before his Sight stops showing him things he never asked for in the first place.

Useful.

Sure.

What it feels like is blinding headaches and constant shadows. He watches his friends slip-slide along overlapping paths in their own futures, in other’s futures, sees darkness spring up in the cracks.

It feels like befriending Sifo Dyas in his youth and watching his secretive mentor withdraw into shades of grey and fear and then _gone_ —

It feels like watching Qui-Gon Jinn achieve Mastery and bounce around the galaxy like a bundle of energy, sending out shockwaves wherever he touches down, never able to be pinned down or contained, throwing light and darkness in almost equal measure and then _gone_ —

It feels like watching Yoda retreat within himself until even his useful ability found it difficult to see past the shroud of age and uncertainty, Yoda is leaving without stepping a foot outside the Temple; leaving and then somehow _gone_ —

It feels like watching Yan Dooku slip away, and he is surrounded by Shadows and shadows alike and his eyes grow colder and then he leaves and then in every way that matters he is _gone_ —

It feels like seeing a small boy with bright eyes and a dimpled chin dance around the salles, and with every day that passes the Shatterpoints and beams of light around him grow and grow, and then the shadows fall and Obi-Wan is old before his time and the war is eating away at him in a manner that not even his beloved Padawan seems to see, Obi-Wan is _gone_ —

It feels like watching a former slave stand in a chilly room surrounded by the great and powerful and this boy is not just surrounded by Shatterpoints, he _is_ a Shatterpoint, everything he touches changes at his will and he is so compassionate and so reckless and so willing to embrace any shade of light or dark to see victory come to them, and—

And it’s not until he is flying, weightless, through the Coruscant night—the last night of Coruscant as it was and had been—falling uncontrollably with violent tremors and spasms wracking his every atom, missing a hand and full of terror, that he realizes that that boy had been gone for some time, and that in his place is a man who would see to it that everything the boy had loved was shattered.

Falling through the night, Mace Windu _allows_ himself, for the first time since he had been Knighted at the young age of seventeen, to feel despair.

Years of his life full of thundering migraines and disturbed sleep, and still he had somehow missed the obvious.

Despite the fact that Anakin Skywalker had not responded to his cries for help, had severed his hand and his lightsaber from his body, had betrayed them all—

He can not find it in himself to blame the boy. The man had Fallen, but no man ever truly leaves behind his youth, not really. Not even Yoda had left behind all his childhood faults and dreams; Mace certainly hadn’t. His inability to trust and his flair for the dramatic were proof enough of that.

Before he impacts on the unforgiving duracrete, Master Mace Windu peers into one last Shatterpoint—not even a Shatterpoint, a _person_ , a man on his knees in front of a monster, and sees through the cracked glass and broken places…

A glimpse of light.

**Author's Note:**

> There's a lot of hate for Mace Windu out there. I love him. He's not always likeable, but he makes sense as a character. He's realistic, and severely underrated despite being played by Samuel L. Jackson and carrying a purple freaking lightsaber.


End file.
